This volume includes six essays, the first dating from 1935 and the last from 1967, by one of the outstanding economists of our time. The economics presented in this volume is political economy worthy of the name: a discipline which shows us the social relations, in particular the class and group conflicts, behind the economic quantitative relations. Michal Kalecki, as Joan Robinson has pointed out, anticipated the Keynesian system, from a training in the field of Marxist economics. The translation to English was executed by the author himself, just before his death in April 1970.
This is the first of seven volumes in a definitive edition of the works of Michal Kalecki, who is one of the most distinguished economists of this century. The works will be of interest for the controversial light which they shed on the ideas expounded by John Maynard Keynes, since Kalecki arguably arrived at these conclusions even earlier than Keynes. This volume documents the confrontation between the two economists. It also charts Kalecki's development of a theory of full employment, including his early theoretical writings, and some of his less famous works.
In this collection authors from eight different countries, representing a wide variety of academic disciplines and theoretical perspectives, investigate the differing phases of capitalist development. They offer diverse and powerful analyses of the postwar boom, economic crises and globalization within this context.
The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.
How China Became Capitalist details the extraordinary, and often unanticipated, journey that China has taken over the past thirty five years in transforming itself from a closed agrarian socialist economy to an indomitable economic force in the international arena. The authors revitalise the debate around the rise of the Chinese economy through the use of primary sources, persuasively arguing that the reforms implemented by the Chinese leaders did not represent a concerted attempt to create a capitalist economy, and that it was 'marginal revolutions' that introduced the market and entrepreneurship back to China. Lessons from the West were guided by the traditional Chinese principle of 'seeking truth from facts'. By turning to capitalism, China re-embraced her own cultural roots. How China Became Capitalist challenges received wisdom about the future of the Chinese economy, warning that while China has enormous potential for further growth, the future is clouded by the government's monopoly of ideas and power. Coase and Wang argue that the development of a market for ideas which has a long and revered tradition in China would be integral in bringing about the Chinese dream of social harmony.
Over 630 million Chinese escaped poverty since the 1980s, the largest decrease in poverty in history. Studying 700 manufacturing firms in the Yangzi region, the authors argue that the engine of China’s economic miracle—private enterprise—did not originate at the top but bubbled up from below, overcoming initial obstacles set up by the government.
